Flappy Bird: 5 tips, hints, cheats and tricks to tap your way up the leaderboards

Flappy Bird strategy guide: top 5 ways to score higher and stay saner at Flappy Bird, the game everyone loves to hate ... or hates to love!

Flappy Bird is the hottest game on the Play Store — at least for the moment — and topmost on every gamer's mind is how to get a higher score than their friends without smashing their phone to pieces in the process. Flapp Bird is a fantastically terrible game, its design is derivative, its mechanics maddening, and its popularity no doubt the result of incredible rage-of-mouth marketing. Yet despite all of that (or maybe because of it), we can't. Stop. Playing. So how can you get better at Flappy Bird faster? For some games it's simply a matter of finding the right tips, hints, and cheats. Flappy Bird, however, is so simple, that there are few to no ways to hack the system. But that doesn't mean you can't hack yourself...

1. Use a big screen

Though Flappy Bird is entirely playable on an Android phone, it's much easier if you play on a tablet. Not only are your hands less cramped, but you'll have an easier time discerning details, and less of a chance your own finger will obscure your view and get in your way. Not to mention, you can soak in all of the glorious 16-bit-style art on a tablet.

2. Find a spot for your finger

If you are playing Flappy Bird on an Android phone, pick a smart place to tap and stick with it. The corners where the ground scrolls by is a good spot and won't get in the way of oncoming pipes. This is particularly important if you're tapping with your right hand, since that's the edge where the pipes fly in from. You may find you have even more control with a stylus.

3. Mute outside notifications

Don't let an errant phone call ruin a good run. Any notification can send your stupid little bird face-first into the ground. Go ahead and mute notification sounds before you start to play. If you have a Samsung device, you can turn on Blocking mode.

You might also want to take a moment to close all other apps and reboot before you play in order to maximize game and system stability.

4. Find your rhythm

Make sure to get the timing for your taps down pat. The whole point of the game is to get the bird through the pipes without touching them, which means you have to learn to keep it as level as possible. Since the bird is always coming up or going down, you need to time your taps so that those peaks and dips are as consistent as possible and short enough to fit through the gaps.

Recover your rhythm quickly after you rise or fall to the right height for the pipe by double-tapping or pausing to drop, then getting stable again really fast. This will take plenty of practice, so keep at it.

5. Keep your cool

Flappy Bird is an easy game to get angry at. You'll be failing often, and as silly as it may be, you're going to get stressed out about it, and that can affect your performance. Luckily, the same stress-reducing techniques that are commonplace outside of these games works just as well when trying to stay focused. Slow, steady, breathing actually works wonders. It sounds silly, but it creates calm and focus. When you start getting close to your high score — or your friend's high score — you'll be less likely to freak out and fly right into a pipe.

Bonus tip: Fly low!

If you come into the pipes on the low side and tap right before, there's less chance of tapping too hard and crashing on the high side. If you come in middle or high and tap a bit too hard, you're crashy bird. I kept crashing on the high side so switching to this technique helped me triple my score fast.

Your top Flappy Wing tips, hints, and tricks?

If these Flappy Bird tips, hints, and cheats work for you, be sure to leave a comment, and if you've come up with other ways to do better at Flappy Bird, you should also let us know! As always, include your high score!

Please stop talking about it. At this point it's beginning to look like you're being paid to do so. No other game has had this volume of writing in this short period, and every article starts by talking about how bad it is. You're just click-baiting at this point and I thought AC was better than that.

And it's not just AC. My Android feeds are full of flappy bird articles everyday.. I was finally drawn in and installed it and now I can't stop playing it cuz somehow my personal goal always goes up 5 points every time I die.

hahaha, i was thinking the same thing. And what is the argument against giving feedback to this site? I think it is a good idea to speak up if you don't like something. I know I love to hear from my users, positive or negative.

I must say that I don't understand the draw of this game at all. When my daughter mentioned that "everyone at school is playing it," I thought I'd take a look. I installed it, played it three times, and promptly uninstalled it. It really only has one skill (compared to the other amazingly popular Angry Birds, which required some thought and a few skills). Oh well. Happy playing to those who do and happy not-playing to those who don't. :)

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